The BackUp Plan
by SHADO Commander
Summary: They say that she can do anything... but can she really?  When Kim is contacted about stepping in with a famous group of law enforcers, she may be in for her ultimate challenge!  Kim gets a feel for the city while Shego goes deep undercover in CHAPTER 3!
1. Chapter 1

_**Author's note**__: For those going__** "Oh no, not ANOTHER new story! Where's the next chapter of **_**At The Centerfold of the Storm**_** and **_**The Princess Diaries?**_**" **__The answer is they're coming and hopefully soon.__While in physical therapy for my broken shoulder, I've found my time to work on KP projects very limited… I write for a living by day as well, so by the time I get done with the stuff that pays the bills and THEN the therapy, my arm's just about dead. So, to keep putting SOMETHING out, I've been digging out old plot bunnies and stories I'd already started and cleaning them up. I posted this a few weeks ago on the Haven as a rough, but I think it's ready to go out into the world now. And YES, there is more of it already written. Legal stuff at the bottom to avoid spoilers, heh heh! _

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**THE BACK-UP PLAN**

By SHADO Commander

Chapter One - Interview

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"282… 283… 284…"

Beep-beep-Be-Beep!

Kim Possible grunted in exasperation as the piercing tones of her Kimmunicator cut into the isotonic section of her morning workout. Terrific. Going back and grabbing the remainder later was going to hurt more than cramming them in now, and for one brief fraction of a nano-second she considered ignoring the device for the few seconds it would take to finish the last sixteen sit-ups… but in the end she was simply fundamentally unable to let the device continue to ring. Heck, if she was honest it had become a Pavlovian reflex somewhere along the way, and while she got fewer calls these days, the ones she got were inevitably more pressing and urgent. The halcyon days when it might have been someone with the need for a cat rescue or even a genuine babysitting job had ended somewhere around the third or fourth time she'd helped save the world.

Sigh…

She supposed the progression was inevitable, but while she didn't miss the cat bites and claw marks, the money she'd made babysitting was a different story. She had to be the only globe-trotting hero in the entire world who couldn't hold down a part time job or scratch together enough cash to go to the movies. To say nothing of next semester's college tuition.

But she could worry about that later. Right now it was 'prevent the epic disaster' time again. Or the 'stop the unstoppable super-villain' routine. With one bitten-nailed hand she plucked the trilling device from her exercise bench, using the other to push her soaked and tangled red mane clear of her tiger green eyes, then used the two of them together to carefully adjust the field of Kimmunicator's forward camera to focus exclusively on her face, placed her right thumb on the 'on' switch and allowed her lean feline frame to collapse bonelessly back onto the workout mat with a thump. It was a well-practiced maneuver that took less time to perform than describe, one born out of sheer necessity due to her recent lackadaisical attitude towards daywear. No doubt her parents would be horrified by her current appearance, and she didn't even want to think what her fashion conscious friend Monique would have to say… probably something about looking like an out of work porn star and involving the words 'raggedy ass'… but ever since the Lowardians, Kim had found herself the focus of far more media attention than she had ever imagined, and the demand that she always look 'perfect' in case of a paparazzi attack had bred a counter response to do as little as possible during the few moments she had that she knew were private. And, with her parents usually off to work long before the teen hero rose and seldom returning until late afternoon at the absolute earliest, and her brothers at Space Camp for the summer, Kim had seen little reason not to conserve her laundry and few remaining sets of 'good clothes' by prowling the house for most of the morning wearing little more than ratty old T-shirts and equally threadbare cotton briefs. It wasn't as if she didn't have a huge collection of both, and they were perfect for most of her exercise routines… however, they WERE already worn down nearly to the point of transparency even before being rendered completely translucent with sweat.

As a result, there HAD been the odd embarrassing occasion when it hadn't been just Wade on the Kimmunicator… and even when it was just her tech genius alone, the young man was definitely in the process of becoming an actual young man and was clearly reaching the point where even Kim's modest feminine charms might become items of interest. Best to simply keep said items out of sight and hopefully out of young minds and spare everyone any future awkwardness. After all, they'd all learned the hard way that combining work and romance could be a bad idea, and the least she could do was spare Wade some of that grief… especially after he and Monique had already had to shoulder a huge share of the drama involved in brokering the peace between herself and Ron after their brief attempt at turning friendship into a 'Relationship' had been brutally crushed underneath the Godzilla-like foot of Ron's no longer completely secret secret ninja school's policy of non-trans-Pacific communication. To say that had sucked completely would be the understatement of the century, and the fact that they'd had to play out the entire travesty while still putting a good face towards the world media had only amped the suckage to 11. Still, as traumatic as it had been for all involved, at least it had happened before they'd made the mistake of trying to take the relationship to the 'next' level. And, in the end, friendship had prevailed and they'd simply decided to back off and see where they were in a few years when… or more likely, she privately admitted, if… Ron finally learned how to keep his suddenly expanded Mystic Monkey powers completely under control.

Again, all of those thoughts flew by in the nano-second it took to toggle the Kimmunicator's 'on' switch, less the product of conscious reasoning than simply an acknowledgement of what was.

"Hey Wade." Kim forced a wide display of teeth that passed as her 'game' face as the familiar features of her tech guru and web master rastered onto the device's small screen. "What's the sitch?"

"Um…" There was no disguising the nervousness in Wade's voice. Instantly, Kim was on full alert, as something in the way Wade's whole body fidgeted back and forth immediately triggering a wide battery of alarms.

"Hey Kim," Wade recovered quickly. "Uh… funny you should ask… I got a real strange call a few minutes ago."

"Strange?" Kim's eyes narrowed. "Strange as in weird strange or ominous strange?"

"Oh, uh… No! Not ominous!" Wade protested, though he was still not quite meeting Kim's eyes. "I mean, actually, it's not bad at all, I guess… and depending on your point of view… it MIGHT be really good but... I'm not sure how you'll feel about the requirements."

"Requirements?" Kim massaged her forehead with her free hand, hoping to ward off what felt like the beginnings of a headache. "It's not another Global Justice recruitment scheme, is it?"

"No, I think Betty's finally accepted that you're not interested in even talking with her again until after you've got your Masters. I think this is something you would be interested in, but they were really, REALLY sparse on details and… um…" Now it was Wade who rolled his eyes back up into his skull. "The thing is… They want you to agree to an interview BEFORE they'll even tell us what the mission is."

"Interview?" Kim blinked. "Hold on. You mean like a JOB interview?"

"That's right," Wade gulped. Now the reasons for his evasiveness were becoming more obvious. There had been a time when she'd been more ready to accept the fact that some people could be worried about her being able to take on some of the missions she undertook, but these days her 'credentials' were public knowledge… and generally anyone who wanted her to 'prove' herself first was going to be nothing but trouble anyway.  
Which brought up the interesting question of why Wade hadn't already informed them of her 'my way or the highway' policy?

"They DO know what I do, right?" She frowned, keeping the growl in her voice to a soft minimum. "And how long I've been doing it?"

Wade's response was equally carefully controlled. "Yes Kim, they know exactly who you are. But… when I tell you who THEY are, I think maybe you'll understand why they're being so cautious."

"In that case," Kim sighed, "Maybe you should just cut to the chase and TELL me already."

So Wade told her.

"Holy crap," a stunned Kim replied once her brain had had time to assimilate who it was that was asking. What the hell did THEY think that SHE could do for THEM…?

Then again… her motto HAD always been that she could do anything. It looked like someone was finally going to call her on it.

And more than that, she KNEW why Wade had really been so nervous.

"You already told them that I'd do it, didn't you?" She scolded, putting a bit more accusation in her tones than she really felt.

"Just the meeting!" Wade yeeped, a flush rising on his face. "I… I couldn't say no, Kim. Not to THEM."

"Yeah… I can see that," She gave in to Wade's pathetic attempts to pull off a puppy dog pout. "Oh what the hell, if they want to talk to me, I'll talk to them… but no promises."

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The man across the table was every bit as intimidating as she'd expected him to be. Having dealt with a wide range of alien conquerors, generals and more mad scientists than she could shake a stick at, Kim was pleased to find that she was able to meet his steely gaze evenly, though she couldn't deny the nervous tickle that started at the bottom of her spine and ran all the way up her to the base of her brain stem as she took in those cold, empty eyes. Damn. They really did look like they did in the photos.

And yet, ironically, she realized after a split second, the person he most reminded her of was Mr. Barkin, her former teacher and vice-principal. Perhaps it was the way he seemed to personify 'authority'… or perhaps it was the way he was pretending to idly shuffle through the thick 'dossier' on her that he had casually produced and placed on the desk in front of him. The one with her name, the word 'CLASSIFIED' in big red letters and the logo for Global Justice all emblazoned on the front. He would have actually have impressed her more if he'd simply laid the folder down so that she could see it, as there was little doubt in Kim's mind that he already had most of the information in the folder committed to memory and that making her wait was simply a way of establishing a psychological advantage.

Kim took advantage of the time to mentally run through a couple of martial arts katas, as it probably would have been unacceptably rude to close her eyes and pretend to sleep. Though if he took much longer, she was going to ask him if Betty knew he'd been going through her drawers…

"You have a very impressive resume, Miss Possible," The man suddenly spoke, his raspy voice not unlike the sound of two millstones grinding together. Two millstones with WAY too much testosterone.

"Thank you sir," She nodded back tightly, but felt compelled to add: "But that's not a resume, and if your only source is Global Justice then it's far from complete. However, if you've read it, I believe that you would have seen that I prefer Ms. these days."

"Ah yes…" Was that a hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth? Yes, it was. So he was at least subconsciously acknowledging that what they were really doing is playing dominance games. "I should have remembered that."

"Yes, you should have," Kim's responded with a more overt show of teeth. "But based on the lack of detail in your communications with Wade, it may be that your memory's simply not what it used to be."

Kerblam. Judging by the way his eyes flashed, that was clearly a big score… she'd suspected that he wouldn't be used to people talking back to him in his official persona. Well, people on THIS side of the law, anyway; especially young women who still looked as though they were in their second year of high school rather than their first year of an accelerated college program that would give her two masters in the next three years. Of course, the 'sweet young thing' was an image she deliberately cultivated these days. As the daughter of a rocket scientist and a brain surgeon, she had more than enough to live up to already without adding the sobriquet 'mature for her years' on top of it.

Not that her opposition let her hit phase him. "I'm afraid," He volleyed back smoothly, "That all I can tell you at this point is that it would be undisclosed assignment that would require your presence for approximately three weeks."

"Well, Gosh!" Kim replied with a smirk that would do Shego proud. "That just explains everything. I don't know what I had such reservations about!"

Another frown from the man across the table. "I take if from that that you're not ready to accept those terms, now that we've met and you've seen that we are, in fact, who we are?"

"That would be correct," Kim took up the challenge easily. "I have great respect for the work that you and your associates have performed in the past, but I'm afraid the credit that bought you was exhausted in getting me to agree to this meeting under these conditions. From this point you'll have to sell the assignment to me on its own merits… and outside of picking a police station as a neutral meeting site, so far the way that you're handling this situation stinks of black ops."

"You… don't trust us?" The man's expression was almost unreadable. Not angry, per se… rather more as though he found the idea to be almost alien. That his personal honor was such a universally accepted concept that he had difficulty imagining someone not simply accepting his word as gospel. And oddly enough, knowing that the shoe had moved onto the other foot, that he was experiencing what she had been feeling, Kim felt her own emotions become more sympathetic for the first time.

"Should I?" She asked quietly. "Either you don't trust me or you think there's something about what you're doing that you think I might have objections to. And if you have Dr. Director's notes, you know how well I take to being manipulated, especially into things that push the edge of my own moral code."

"The doctor did mention something about a Pixie Scout mentality."

"Guilty as charged," Kim admitted. "I know that there are some who believe that anyone who does what I do to be is nothing more than a vigilante, but I do try to keep my face clean… then again, unlike some others I do put my face out there to be seen."

"Touche."

"Would you prefer I lied about my personal feelings? However, no matter what Betty might say in that folder, I'm not as much of an innocent as people think. There are times when the grey areas of the law need to be skirted, and, in that respect, a certain level of anonymity may be an asset…" Kim waited for that to register before she began to stand, "However, I'd need to know quite a bit more than you're offering before I could commit one way or the other. Since that would seem to leave us at an impasse, I guess I'll be going and you can talk to your other candidates."

"No, wait," The man interjected… and then, to his credit, made what Kim imagined passed for an uncomfortable smile on that rock hard face as he made a further admission. "You're correct. I could have handled this much better. However, we're talking about information that could cost someone their life if it were to leak out."

Kim remained poised in her half risen position.

"Please, sit back down," the man relented.

Kim allowed herself to teeter for another half second, before lowering herself back down and looking at him expectantly.

"Yes…" The man sighed. "As you can imagine, I'm not accustomed to sharing this kind of intel with anyone outside our… team. However, since it seems that, if anything, Dr. Director was guilty of a bit of understatement in her descriptions of your force of personality, perhaps it wouldn't be an extreme leap of faith to trust that her descriptions of your other traits were coached in equally cautious terms."

"I'm not sure if there was an insult or a compliment buried inside all of that," Kim muttered.

"Insults should be written in sand," the man replied with a poker face.

"And compliments carved in stone," Kim returned, completing the old Arab proverb. "But then again, trust is the greatest compliment of all."

"Indeed," The man agreed. "Now as I imagine you may be aware, this city is about to play host to six overlapping major events: The opening of the new Art Museum, the International Gem Show, The State Opera Festival, the National VideoGame Developers conference, the NASCAR Grand Prix and the final three games of the Soccer Global Cup."

"Which means a lot of confused people wandering around with a lot of money and jewels, and the capabilities of the local police stretched completely to their limits," Kim noted.

"Exactly. An almost irresistible attraction for any kind of villain." The man paused and thought of how to phrase his next sentence. "And while the city council HAS made funds available to keep extra police on the streets, I believe they're expecting my associates to provide the crucial difference in maintaining law and order."

"That's… understandable," Kim agreed. "But it still doesn't explain your interest in me. If you want more security, I'd think a few dozen rent a cops would trump anything I could do."

"I think you're being unduly modest about your abilities," The man shrugged. "But what if I added the fact… and I'm trusting you to keep this in the strictest confidence… that one of my associates was badly injured last week… a broken leg, before you ask. Nothing permanently disabling, but there's no way the rest of us can cover this entire city for the three week period."

"Wait…" Despite every attempt to keep calm, Kim felt her jaw falling. "Are you saying…?"

"Exactly," He confirmed. "There's no way we can do it unless we can find someone who already has experience doing what we do to step in. Someone who, ideally, is used to working with similar equipment and is a close enough physical match to wear the uniform and accessories with a minimum of re-tailoring."

"In short," the man grinned another of those thin, taut grins. "Someone like you, Ms. Possible."

"Oh no." Kim heard her own voice stammering. "You can't mean…"

"That's exactly what I mean," the man in the cape replied smoothly as he reached beneath the table and produced an all-too familiar cowl, the feminine counter-point to the one he wore himself.

"For the next three weeks," The Dark Knight focused the full force of his will at Kim's innate sense of responsibility as he slid the distinctive headgear towards her. "We need you to be Batgirl."

TO BE CONTINUED…

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_**Holy Bat-Legal stuff!:**__ Kim Possible, Wade Load, Dr. Betty Director, Ron Stoppable, The Doctors Possible (Anne and James) and all other characters borrowed from the wonderful KP Universe are the creations of Mark McCorkle and Bob Schooley, and those names are all trademarks of the Disney media organizations. Batman and Batgirl are property of DC Comics and Time Warner Communications. All use should be considered fair under current parody law, and is not for profit in any case. Finally, this story takes place at a time at which all characters shown should be considered to be over the legal age of 18_


	2. Chapter 2

_**Author's Note:** For those who've asked: there are three main reasons that this wasn't posted as a Batman crossover: 1.) that would have been a **hell** of a spoiler, 2.) the focus of the story will be on Kim and, as if you hadn't already guessed knowing me, eventually Shego, so while the Gotham crowd and local will be important, it's still going to be a Kim/Shego story, and 3.) I'm also really rusty on my Batman, so I'd like some time to get back into that 'verse while I write before submitting it in front of people who will quickly realize that I'm going to go quite AU as far as Gotham is concerned. That said, as we start this is basically set in the same universe as BATMAN-THE ANIMATED SERIES. However, it's a bit later down the timeline, getting closer to the timeline of THE NEW BATMAN ADVENTURES. This is because I wanted Nightwing and the relationship he had with Batgirl as a background element, and that, in turn, means Robin will actually be Robin 2, Tim Drake. Finally, for those who wondered why I put this out when I said I couldn't write as much, it's because much of this was already written. I got the original bunny a long way back after reading Allaine's wonderful story PROFESSIONAL COURTESY .net/s/3380687/1/Professional_Courtesy and knocked out roughs of the first two chapters. And yes, there is a partially completed Chapter 3, but it's currently sitting in the queue behind the long awaited next chapter of AT THE CENTERFOLD OF THE STORM… which, no longer needing the serious pain meds, I feel more comfortable writing again (pun intended.) **Holy Bat-Legal stuff:**__ Kim Possible, Shego, Dr. Betty Director, The Doctors Possible (Anne and James,) the Tweebs (Jim and Tim Possible) and all other characters from the wonderful KP Universe are the creations of Mark McCorkle and Bob Schooley, and those names are all trademarks of the Disney media organizations. Batman and Batgirl are property of DC Comics and Time Warner Communications. All use should be considered fair under current parody law, and is not for profit in any case. Finally, this story takes place at a time at which all characters shown should be considered to be over the legal age of 18_

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**Chapter 2 – PREPWORK**

**By SHADO Commander**

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"Is there a problem?"

Kim looked down and considered how to answer the woman on the other side of the dressing screen. It wasn't just that she didn't want to be potentially hurtful, but also that the limits the young hero had placed on her vocabulary made it hard to even explain…

"Um… well, it doesn't seem to bind," she finally allowed. "Or constrict my movement…"

"But…?"

"Do I have to be completely honest?" Kim blushed.

"No, I want you to lie to me," The voice on the other side of the screen sighed. "I've already broken my leg, Kim. I can't imagine there's much you can say that will make my month worse than that."

"Well…" Kim finally stammered, stepping out from behind the screen to face the woman wearing the famous bat-cowl over a plain white t-shirt and a pair of old jeans that had been cut open at the side to make room for the slim-line leg cast. "THIS is the problem."

"Oh… " Batgirl… the real Batgirl… gulped, her eyes following Kim's exasperated gestures as the younger hero ran her hands from her own sides down towards her crotch. The custom-made suits were made of an ultra-stretchy yet bullet resistant fabric, of course, but as the term custom-made implied, they were also created exactly to fit Gotham hero's own body measurements. EXACTLY. As in a 3D scan of her body below the neck was made, then sent for custom fabrication by a very private and extraordinarily discrete contractor whose clients also included several members of the Justice League and Lady Gaga. The process made for the ideal fighting uniform, a literal second skin, but, needless to say, also meant that when the end result was placed on another woman's body, there were bound to be places where the differences might be more extreme than in others. Given that the process of refitting and ordering new costumes would take over a month… a month they didn't have… they'd hoped that stretchiness of the material would minimize the problems… and for the upper half of the body, which was much more rigid and basically similar to Kelvar, the fit seemed fine except for the fact that Kim would need a little extra padding to "fill out" the chest area.

Unfortunately, when it came to the bottom half of the torso, what they hadn't thought about was how the… clinginess… of the costume's material would affect the 'softer' parts of Kim Possible's anatomy.

"Ermm," Gotham's premiere heroine squirmed. "I guess it is a bit… um…" She fought for the right word.

"Yeah… " Kim grimaced, her normally pale face almost blending into her red hair, similarly struck for a phrase less crude than 'camel toe.' "I mean, I'd already figured I'd have to get some falsies to fill in up top, but the bottom… geez. Would I even have to take it off for a pelvic exam?"

"Not if it was my gyno," Batgirl countered. "But sometimes I think that woman's digging for oil with her speculum."

"And you're still using her?" Kim's brow wrinkled in surprise. "No offense, but it sounds like you need to find a new doctor."

Now it was Batgirl's turn to blush. How did the subject get twisted to this? "Yeah, maybe… but I've been with her for…"

"Since you were a teen? Probably the only gyn you've had?" Kim waited for Batgirl's nod. "I know, common story, and it IS so the drama, but If you're not comfortable with your doctor, you're probably not going to go as often as you should, and as you get older, early detection can be critical when it comes to PID, endometriosis…"

Kim stopped, realizing that Batgirl was staring at her. Good God… had she really just been lecturing BATGIRL on how to take care of her lady parts?

"Ah, sorry," The redhead flushed, "Sometimes I find myself channeling my mom. She's… "

"A brain surgeon, right?" Batgirl questioned, just a hair perplexed as to how they'd ended up here… after all, none of her conversations with Wonder Woman or Black Canary had ever taken this kind of turn… but at the same time, while it WAS a bit weird, she also found herself oddly touched. No wonder Possible had ended up in the superhero business; the young woman couldn't stop herself from trying to be helpful. Which, the caped crusader had to admit, was quite a refreshing change from the revenge-driven angst that had given birth to Gotham's Bat-dynasty.

"Yeah, though she picks up medical degrees the way l master new martial arts forms, so she's got a gynecological degree under her belt, if you'll excuse the pun…" Kim was saying, "And as a result, I've grown up with the whole mantra of what the ideal Doctor/Patient relationship should be like being drilled into my head every day since before I was old enough to know what that place that smelled like disinfectant was called. I even had to test-drive ten different gynecologists before she'd let me settle on the one I have now."

Kim grinned sheepishly at Batgirl's incredulous stare. "Yeah, and yes, it did feel incredibly wrongsick to be playing musical stirrups, especially when I was still trying to come to terms with hopping on the menstrual cycle. But in the end, mother really did know best and I found a doctor that I could really trust to… um…"

"Keep an eye on your business?"

"I was going to say finger through my personal assets, but that works too," Kim agreed, reddening again. "Look, if you'd like, I'm sure she could get some discrete references from her associates here in Gotham, do some of the groundwork for you, so to speak."

"I'd… appreciate that," The crimefighter in the cast admitted. "Of course, I couldn't mention where the reference came from given the whole secret identity thing, but…"

"Oh, it shouldn't take long for her to get a few names, so I can pass them along when I return the costume," Kim agreed with a smile before a much more serious expression colored her face. "This whole double identity stuff is going to be hard to get used to."

_'You have no idea,'_Batgirl thought, once again feeling that strange twinge that came from the fact that she knew so many details about Kim's life, whereas Kim didn't even know what she looked like under the mask, let alone the fact that her real name was Barbara Gordon. Of course, withholding that information hadn't been her decision; the senior Bat had been pretty adamant about drawing the lines of security at that point, and while Barbara was about as fierce and independent as they came, she'd long ago realized that going head to head with Mister tall, dark and bad-tempered was a task best undertaken only when you had a lot of time and a really good reason. Still, it bothered her that while it was fine for Kim Possible to risk her life protecting the bat-clan's secrets, it was something else again for her to know what those secrets actually were. The whole thing just left her feeling incredibly awkward, and the best she could come up with was:

"By the way, I just wanted to say again how much I appreciate that you were willing to do this."

"No big," Kim shrugged. "If something major pops up in Middleton, GJ says they can get me back in about two hours... and since I'm not in school at the moment, the only people who're likely to notice that I'm not around is my family. It might get a little stressful if one of my major foes pops up but…" Kim stopped for a second, then continued, "Nothing compared to what I imagine you have to deal with on a daily basis."

"You get used to it," Barbara duplicated Kim's shrug. "As you said, no big."

"If you say so," Kim murmured thoughtfully. "I just can't help but wonder at all the effort you must have to invest into keeping up the appearance of leading two lives at the same time. I mean, Batgirl can disappear when you're leading your real life, but you must have to go through some pretty twisted deceptions to make people not notice that you're missing, or… to generate cover ups when you can't keep the the two existences separate."

"You mean like having to find a stand in when an idiot crimefighter breaks her leg?"

"Er, yeah," Kim replied with an odd little smile before giving in to curiousity. "Tell me: Are the benefits of the secret identity really worth all the time and trouble?"

"Actually," The original girl in the mask laughed back, "I've been wondering how to ask you how you can do this kind of thing and NOT have a secret identity."

The two women looked at each other with similarly amused smirks.

"Well," Kim grunted at last. "I kinda fell into this. By the time I'd graduated from doing rescues and small missions, my name was already out there. But honestly, it's never been much of an issue."

"But don't you worry about someone trying to take out their anger against you on you family?" Barbara frowned.

"Oh, people have tried," Kim made a dismissive gesture. "But this apple didn't fall very far from the tree and my folks are pretty capable of taking care of themselves. We don't advertise it, but Mom and Dad both studied martial arts when they were younger… that's how I got interested at such an early age… and the Tweebs... those are my brothers… can put just about every evil genius I've fought to shame in their ability to create weapons out of household objects. And then, once I started to really make a name for myself, we spent a couple of family nights together developing a micro-chip they all had implanted, with an integrated forced wave neurophase projecter and linked to one of my Uncle Slim's personal satellites…"

"Hold on," Barbara interjected. "A forced wave what?"

"Um…" Kim thought about how to phrase it to someone who might not be familiar with what was technically still highly classified technology. "It's kinda like a taser, except it can affect anything up to 40 feet from the mother-chip, and emits a specific frequency that locks down the higher cognitive portions of the brains of the targets. All they know is that one second they're moving in on my mom, the next they're waking up naked in a dumpster in New Jersey 10 hours later with all of their credit cards and financial assets frozen. After the first couple of attempts, word got around and no one tries any more."

"Ah…" Barbara goggled, her mind reeling. "That's…"

"Not exactly legal," Kim grinned, "But as I told your Big Blue Cheese, I DO understand the need to skirt the grey areas of the law sometime. Which, come to think of it, this suit may be doing right now. What's the deal with the painted on look anyway?"

"Fashion," Barbara sighed. "Gotham Style has always been suits and spandex, but when Catwoman discovered latex it was all over. Let's face it, with very rare exceptions what most female villains are after is publicity, and if want they want to get their share of their pictures in the tabloids and online, everyone's got to show a little something."

"Well, that explains the _villains_," Kim nodded agreeably.

"What? You think the rest of us want to look like someone's dowdy Aunt Harriet next to the criminal we just caught? So the trends get more and more daring and we just follow."

"And I thought being a fashion sheep ended in High School," Kim mock-grimaced as she turned to look at herself in the full length mirror before musing thoughtfully. "On the other hand, since as far as anyone will know, I'll be you, I guess I can handle showing the world a bit more than I usually do. It'll be interesting to see what life is like with a decent rack too, once I get this properly padded."

"You're welcome," Batgirl rolled her eyes as Possible attempted to simulate the effect of inserts by pulling the fronts of the cups out into exaggerated points. "Hey! Now that's WAY too much! I won't be the subject of your breast fixations, Possible!"

They both paused as the accidental double-entendre hit them, the Gotham hero suddenly blushing as red as Kim had done previously. "I meant, uh…"

"It's okay, I get it," Kim giggled. "But don't deny those of us who've been less fortunate our fantasies, alright? I'm just trying to work myself up for this… I think I can do it."

"Yeah, you can do anything," Batgirl snorted.

"Yep," Agreed Kim, "But to be honest, even though I can, I'm glad that there's no way that Shego's ever going to see me like this... I'd never hear the end of it."

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"I'm just glad Possible's never going to see me like this," Shego scowled, looking at her image in the tall, thin mirror. Her normally pale skin was now flat white courtesy of a scalp to toes dye job that could only be removed with a combination of two different catalytic agents, while each of her eyes was ringed with stylized flames in alternating rings of dark and sky blue, thankfully rendered in more traditional makeup. The less said about the rest of the shiny-metallic outfit the better.

"Just make sure she doesn't," the one-eyed woman standing behind her warned. "No matter how much makeup we throw on, the odds are 98 to one that Kim would recognize you simply from the way you move, and Global Justice has spent way too much time building up your new persona of Blue Fire to risk blowing it for a quick romp."

Shego turned on Betty Director, scowling. "Why do you always try to make it sound like I've got a thing for the little brat?"

"Three years of forensic evidence pulled from the remains of three dozen different lairs, including a calendar counting down to her 18th birthday."

"Which has come and gone, I'd like to point out," Shego fired back.

"After you agreed to the terms of your pardon, which included staying away from her until she's 21 and doing these little side jobs for us."

"Gah," Shego… or _"Blue Fire"_ as she was known when she wore this ridiculous costume with its trailing blue and white streamers and silver go-go boots… growled. How had she, the most dangerous woman in the world, ended up wearing an outfit that went out of style while Jane Fonda was still playing Barbarella? Obviously the (forcibly) retired villain's costume designer that GJ had "employed" to create it had decided to use blue and silver lame in an attempt to make the lamest supervillain costume ever as a big F-U-G-J and had succeeded beyond her wildest expectations.

It was on days like this that the temptation to lay Betty out on the floor with a single smoking punch and walk out the doorway of Global Justice, never to be seen again, was almost impossible to resist; yet somehow… somehow Shego managed to refrain from doing it once again. Although, sometimes she really really did wonder why she bothered. Princess' 21st was still a long ways away, and even though the ex-villain was stacking hope on hope that there just might really be some spark between them, that the hints of interest she'd prayed she'd detected during their innumerable battles weren't just figments of her own desperate imagination, everything she'd seen thus far indicated that Kim was still depressingly heterosexual. So why WAS Shego was throwing so much of her own life away just to have a clean slate that gave her a chance on what was a million to one shot at best? It really was beyond her… and yet here she was, dancing to Global Justice tune for exactly that. Exactly when did her life become so pathetic?

The first time that under-aged cheerleader had shown up in Drakken's lair with moves like Shego had never seen except in a mirror, that's when. God, the way that girl flowed like liquid around her spinning fire, the way the two of them turned martial arts into a perfect pas de deux…

But at least then she'd had Kimmie in the flesh to work her frustration out on, even if it wasn't in the way the green villainess would have preferred. Now she took on whole classes of GJ recruits in special training sessions and, even fighting against 20 geej's at a time, she still didn't get half the workout or satisfaction as she did against the jailbait redhead.

"So exactly what am I supposed to do in Gotham?" She asked again, not because she didn't know, but because she knew having to explain things over and over was the most surefire way to vex Betty Director. If she couldn't mess with Kim, she was damn sure going to mess with someone.

But then again, what did she even care WHY she was going there or what she was going to do? She wasn't going to see Kim again for a long time, and at least Bat-Town was far enough away from Middleton that nothing that happened there was likely to get back to anyone she knew (or wished to know in the Biblical sense.) And while Blue Fire WAS a lame name and her costume uninspired and stupid, in a town like Gotham, where people dressed like Scarecrows and Clowns, it was only depressingly middle of the road, so she wouldn't feel like a complete idiot wearing it.

Only about 98% of an idiot.

And yet still... who knew... maybe if she was really lucky, 'Blue Fire' might run into a fight or a one night stand or two that could take some of the edge off her yearnings for a certain red-headed siren for a few days. With that in mind, this assignment didn't seem quite so bad in the total scheme of things. After all, didn't they say that "What Happens In Gotham, Stays in Gotham?"

_Hmmmmm…_

"Nevermind," Shego cut off Dr. Director before she could launch into her detailed plan once more. "I think I've got it. The key is that I'm supposed to be looking at moving into town permanently, right? Setting up a new lair, the works?"

"Um… yes… That's the fastest way to get you tied into the entire criminal underground." Betty acknowledged suspiciously. "Why?"

"Well, I just figured out how I'm going to sell this," Shego slid effortlessly into her own sales pitch. "The story you've set up is that 'Blue Fire's been working the backwater towns up to now. What that doesn't explain is why, if she's been successful, she's packing up her truck and moving to a place where she'll be the new fish in a great big pond filled with sharks."

"That HAS been a weak point in the cover story," Betty conceded.

"Right, so let's say that she's getting older and a little more mature, so she's looking at kicking things up a notch and reinventing herself in the big time."

"Meaning Gotham?" Betty blinked, sort of following the logic.

"The town where the Batman sleeps," Shego agreed. "And the first thing she's going to do is change her name."

"What?" Betty squawked! "But we spent…"

"And everyone will know that it's the same person, thanks to a couple of covertly placed web photos and blog comments, so none of that establishing work will go to waste," Shego smiled. "And, in fact, it actually makes it more believable. After all, let's face it, when a super hero or villain is in the middle of a major identity crisis, isn't changing their name usually one of the first things they do? It completely sells the backstory by putting all the attention on the name change."

"But they…" Betty began, then stopped as something clicked behind that little chunk of ice she used for an eye. "Hey… you're right."

"Doy! You want to know how supervillains think, you need to have been a supervillain!" Shego grinned.

'_Or,'_ thought Dr. Director, suppressing a smug smile. _'If you want to sell the idea of a supervillain having an identity crisis, you send a supervillain having an identity crisis.'_

"Okay," Betty made a forceful attempt at appearing to give in reluctantly. "I'll trust you in this case."

"Perfect," Shego smirked, secure in the knowledge that she had just pulled a fast one and basically got Global Justice to finance a very long and indulgent shopping trip.

"There's just one thing," Dr. Director returned, trying very hard not to let her glee at having so perfectly manipulated Shego show. She'd figured that if she could somehow get the former villain to become focused more on Gotham's rather extravagant villain lifestyle, she'd be keeping the woman from putting her mind back on something that she did all too well. The idea was to KEEP Shego from going back to being a criminal, after all! "What's the new name you're going to use?"

"Oh, I'll come up with something," Shego replied slyly, though the truth was that she'd already come up with the perfect name for her 'new persona'... but she'd wait until it was too late for anyone to see how she was going to SPELL it.

"But I was thinking of Sapph-Fire."

_TO BE CONTINUED…._


	3. Chapter 3

_**Author's Note:**__ The legal stuff is at the end again to avoid spoilers… and all I can say in my defense is how could I NOT go in this direction? _

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**Chapter 3 – THE (un) USUAL SUSPECTS**

**By SHADO Commander**

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"This is an outrage!" The pointy eye-browed man with the ratty-beard and lame butterfly suit screamed as he exited the small office tucked away at the end of HenchCo's main Gotham warehouse and recruiting center. "Do you know who you're trifling with?"

"It's okay, sweetie," the stunningly hot black-haired woman with the pink retro Jackie outfit and a frighteningly deep voice soothed the mothman as they were lead out. "He said he'd call if one of the lairs on hold opened up."

Shego resisted the urge to grit her teeth at the man's continued whining… that might have given away the fact that she'd been listening in on the entire conversation… as well as the three before it… with the GJ ultrasonic audio amplifier she was currently wearing disguised as one of a pair of blue sapphire earrings. However, it was hard not to be discouraged under the current circumstances.

Her 'simple' little assignment had been to drop into the Gotham criminal underground and gather info about the other… er… the REAL supervillains and send it on to Global Justice without causing too much havoc herself. The one-eyed harridan who ran the ultra secret law enforcement agency had made no secret of not trusting the resident caped crusaders' ability to keep the peace over the upcoming few weeks, but, at the same time, GJ's complex relationship with the Bats was currently much too thorny for Dr. Director to have offered any direct assistance to the Gotham PD. Not that Shego normally cared a damn what Betty's local problems were, but that had only been the beginning of the steadily increasing shitstorm of stupid crap and piss-poor luck that had been raining on the ex-villain since she'd come to Gotham.

It had been bad enough that when she'd arrived here two hours ago and discovered that there was a line… an actual, honest to God queue of approximately 30 villains waiting to rent lairs and henchmen! She'd been relieved at first when half of them had been asked to leave once they'd filled out their 1069-02s (Lair Rental Request Forms) and been proven to be wannabes with no prior villaining history. Shego had to give Betty one point for that: the staged and nearly staged jobs she'd pulled out west under the Blue Fire name had definitely given her alias just enough street cred to be taken seriously here. Or, then again, maybe it was just that she'd ditched the Blue Fire costume in favor of a more comfortable pair of blue jeans and an old black leather motorcycle jacket that made her look even more intimidating than she usually did… which was saying quite a bit.

In either case, the NEXT thing to go wrong had been when she'd found out that Jack Hench was handling the interviews personally. It was one thing for her to attempt to bluff her way past some local office worker, but she'd met Hench dozens of time in person and she had to wonder if the dye and paint job Betty's team had worked on her would be enough to fool him. Worst case scenario, of course, was that she could come out to him and admit that she was really Shego and that she was starting up the new villain career while keeping the pardon she'd received for her new identity. It wasn't as if that kind of duplicity wasn't completely in character for her, after all, which was why Betty had originally approached her with the idea of going bad again in the first place. Anyone who did manage to crack the disguise of the woman pretending to be a supervillain would find that she was actually… ta daa! a real supervillain.

That was a revelation Shego really didn't want to make, however, as it would mean blowing a cover they'd spent a lot of time creating. Spending another six months in some backwater part of the country making 'thefts' from third rate museums and fifth rate private collectors was bad enough, but the semi-staged bank robberies she'd had to pull always carried the danger of accidentally getting shot by one of the local cops or guards who wasn't cued into the scam. And it would require even more time to do it because any NEW identity that they created for her would be even harder to establish… her powers were fairly unique and it had taken a lot of time for GJ's research team to discover the chemical combination that made her plasma burn blue instead of green. Plus, even if they could figure out how to tint it, say, red, there was the little issue of changing her skin color AGAIN. At least her current blue-white wasn't that far off from the pale green she'd gotten used to, next time she might be red or dandylion yellow.

And then there was that other reason that Shego didn't want anyone to find out that she was being a villain again, even if it WAS as part of an undercover operation.

Not that ANY of that looked like it was going to even matter at this point, as what was making Shego's job seem nearly impossible right now was that it looked like Betty had, if anything, underestimated the level of interest the cornucopia of high dollar events occurring so close together had brought to Gotham. To start with, the local kingpins of crime had all gone on a major hiring binge weeks ago, with the end result being that if you wanted ANY henchmen in this town, you HAD to go straight to the source: Jack Hench. And what Shego's eavesdropping was revealing pretty quickly was that Hench himself was reaching his limit. Oh, he could bring in more Henchmen from out of town, but the formerly green woman had heard him tell the three of the five villains ahead of her in line that he was basically out of Henchco Lairs, and the Henchco Henchman's contracts were VERY specific about Henches being able to work only in lairs that had been certified as acceptable by the senior Union reps. Those, needless to say, were all either in the hands of, or promised to, the local crooks, and while Hench could probably get a few more on line before the first major event began, it was going to be a sellers market.

"It's not gouging. Its basic supply and demand," Hench had told the first villain he'd met with, a strange looking man whose head was nothing but an exposed brain. "In fact, I think I'm being pretty stand up in honoring my usual contractual terms with my local regulars. If they've got the cash at their established rates, they get the men and real estate. If, after all my regulars have had the opportunity to pay at their USUAL rates, on the spot, THEN I'll make the space available at whatever price I think the market will bear. The same goes for the Henchmen… I'm bringing in as many as I can from out of town, but the Joker, the Penguin, Two-Face and the Riddler are all still asking for more too."

That villain had left with Hench's promise that he'd be called as soon as/if a lair became available, and the second villain, a big, burly hominid with the head of a wolf or dog… she wasn't quite sure which, although she guessed 'it' was a male from the business suit it wore… received much the same treatment.

The THIRD interviewee, was another a matter altogether, and had been a major gamechanger. For one thing, they'd swept him in through an unmarked side entrance and Shego would never have even SEEN him if the pocket game system she'd been pretending to play hadn't actually been displaying the signal from the little dead cockroach-shaped camera/AV transmitter that she'd dropped on the floor and kicked down the hall while pretending to get a drink of water. The second giveaway was that Hench had practically been fawning over the villain, who wore a green shroud over a complete set of armor that obscured even his face. There was only one villain who matched that description… no on else would dare imitate his 'look'… but what the hell was HE doing here in Gotham?

"I said I can't give you one YET, your Excellency," Jack Hench had told the man immediately. "If you'd called in advance I could have arranged something, but Gotham's only so big and Henchco has a limited number of rent-a-lairs in the vicinity. Add to that the amount of cash that's going to be flowing through the city over the next two months, every villain in the Western Hemisphere is trying to get in on the action."

"I am trusting that by the word 'yet,' that you WILL procure a lair before I require it?" The uber-villain asked.

"I'm certain that I can," Hench had promised quickly, then added conspiratorially, "Let's just say that there some of my regulars who broke out of Arkham two days ago. To be frank, they're not the kind my Henchmen are comfortable working with in the first place, but they've also managed to raise the wrath of one of the major local players. I'd prefer that they just disappeared, but the problem is the contractual obligations Henchco's tied to in their lease. Technically, I HAVE to hold their lair available for them for five days after they escape or are released. BUT, since also I happen to know that they're cash poor and all of their accounts have been frozen…"

"Then name your price and be done with it." the armored man had growled irritably. "You know I will outbid anyone for that spot."

Shego had suppressed a scowl on hearing that. Dr. Director had never placed an absolute cap on her spending limit, but it sounded like the amount of cash that Hench would be asking for was going to be astronomical. If the 'new' villain was able to walk in and pay those kind of inflated rates, Sapph-Fire was going to be subjected to a lot more scrutiny… more than her cover story might bear. How much could she dare bid, in good judgment?

Then her thoughts about dollars and sense had been suddenly interrupted by the next bombshell that fell from Hench's lips.

"I can't," Hench had been protesting. "This is America, not Latveria, so I have to go through the pretense of following our own written policies… however…" Hench's voice had dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "I could give you the information you need to know to… make sure that they're eliminated from the equation, so to speak, and put you in possession of the property."

"And possession," He'd added slyly, "Is nine tenths of the law. Even in America,"

That had stunned Shego. It wasn't that she was surprised that he would screw some of his regulars over for a high roller… she'd never known Jack Hench to give up an opportunity to make a dime… but she'd never expected that he would actually set one of his own clients up for axing by another. Fortunately, this was all being recorded by the DTR in her left shoe, so Shego had no doubt that at some point in the future that little bit of audio was going to cause quite a lot of grief for Hench. Unfortunately for whoever the targets were, whatever info he'd given metalhead as to their identities and location had apparently been on a piece of paper, because the other man's deep rasping voice had simply said:

"Understood. I imagine we'll be talking again tomorrow."

"I imagine we shall, your Excellency," Hench was grinning as he ushered the walking museum display out the same hidden door, before coming back down the hall, turning to the butterfly-clad man and snapping "Next!"

Shego had barely let Hench's conversation with the moth guy skim over the top of her brain, though it was impossible to completely ignore his constant moaning and kvetching at the injustice he was receiving. Never mind that he was essentially receiving the same song and dance that the brain and wolf guys had received. Whoever Mister Moth-face was, he had a vastly exaggerated concept of his position in the world… and even though Hench had basically been snowballing him, Shego had to admit that it had been done in a very congenial manner. No one who hadn't heard the previous conversation would have thought anything out of the ordinary was going on.

"Next!" snapped Hench and the next victim… er, villain… got up and walked into his office. Some idiot wearing a giant gold cobrahead and carrying a cobrastaff. Even in her current mental flux, she had to wonder how could possibly be practical? Where did these people get these ideas for costumes? Shego looked at the number in her own hand, number 12, and grimaced. It was clear that everyone else was going to get the blow off as well, but if she just got up and left now, people would wonder why… and that led to the possibility that some question would be asked that might end up blowing her cover. That would be bad. At the same time, there was also a chance that if she did leave now, and reported what she'd already heard back to Dr. Director right now, some analyst at GJ might be able to figure out who it was that Hench was setting up and at least prevent a couple of murders…

"Damnit!" A voice broke into her chain of thought. "We broke out of Arkham for this?"

Shego looked up to see that it was one of the villains setting across the hallway from her, whispered abruptly. "I ain't got two pennies to rub together, do you?"

"He has to give us five days," the person to whom the whispered question had been addressed to spoke softly and reassuringly, rubbing the other's hand with a caressing motion… and immediately Shego was all ears.

Well, all ears and barely restrained bulging eyes, actually, as she put two and two together. Someone, she thought, in the GJ profiling section was going to be in for a bit of overtime when she filed her report, because the news that THOSE two were working together hadn't been on the briefing sheets she'd gone over just this morning. Not that it could remain a secret for long, given that they obviously weren't just worki…

Holy crap. Suddenly everything clicked and she knew who was being set up and why. Yes, THAT particular local player was crazy enough that anything that calmed him down might be worth it to Hench. At least Dr. Doom would be neat about it. The Joker… who knew what that psycho might attempt?

And with that realization, an entirely new plan fell into place. Betty was probably going to freak but… oh yes! This was going to be FUN!

"Excuse me," 'Sapph-Fire' addressed the mismatched pair across the aisle with a broad smile, having crossed the hall so fast it might have appeared that she'd teleported. "If you have a minute, I have a business proposition I think you'll be interested in."

Blinking in surprise, the two women across from her stared back in astonishment. You didn't approach supervillains like this… It just wasn't done… and yet…

"Well," The one with the heavy makeup turned to her partner and nodded thoughtfully… "She IS wearing a Harley jacket… That ought to count for something. Right?"

"Exactly… what kind of proposal?" Poison Ivy asked warily, possessively holding Harley Quinn's hand in her own.

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Triggering the remote release on the Bat-Grapple, Kim performed a faultless quadruple flip in mid air, hovering almost weightless six hundred feet above the streets of Gotham as she utilized her own spin to extend the magic split second before inertia forward and upward began to be canceled by gravity. Her mind counted off the time with metronome-like precision… 3… 2…1… and her ear was rewarded with the click and ping that announced that the cable was both fully retracted and re-armed for firing again. Then, just as she started to fall, she fired the Grapple again, aiming at the thin steel rails that supported the giant neon sign atop the Gotham Utility Light Power building below and flying forward as the line went taut, swinging her forward again in a manner that was a bit more Spiderman-esque than proper Bat-style dictated. But it was effective, which was the point she was trying to make.

A quick thumb-flick and the reel on the Grappler spun furiously in the opposite direction as it gobbled back down the cable it had just extruded, pacing her rate of fall to bring her into a smooth arc that dropped her to the roof of the shorter, adjacent United Export building.

"_Easy!" _She gloated smugly as she coasted in for a perfect two-point landing, the hooks disengaging with a simple flick of the wrist and retracting back into the main body of the grappler. She'd taken a glance back in the middle of one of her last swings to see if she could see Nightwing behind her, using the reflective sides of the Power Tower as an improvised rear view mirror, and since her supposed guide was barely a speck on the horizon behind her, it would probably be a good idea to sit and wait for him to catch up. Unable to completely stop moving while the adrenaline was still pumping through her system, however, she decided to squeeze in a few aerobics, which had the additional benefit of helping keep her warm in the chill Gotham night air.

Kim was a good three minutes into her routine when her pursuer finally caught up, breathing just a bit too heavily for the cool demeanor he was trying to project. She wasn't quite sure what to make of Nightwing yet… at times he seemed carry a bigger cloud of gloom around him than Batman himself, at others he was like a big brother… unlike the Dark One who seemed to be stuck in glower mode every time Kim had to train with him.

That, however, had proved to occur far less frequently than Kim had expected, especially since the senior Bat-statesman had originally seemed rather insistent about taking her out to 'show her the ropes' personally. Once it had become blatantly obvious that she could already loop rings around him using the archaic bat-a-rang and bat-grapple system the Dark Knight had apparently been using since his cape was a security blanket, the grim, taciturn hero had mumbled something about 'youthful energy' and turned her over to the others, charging the slightly-less grim, slightly less taciturn Nightwing with helping her 'learn the lay about of the city.'

Personally, Kim felt she'd probably learned a lot more of importance in watching the interaction of the two heroes… who clearly had a lot of issues… than she had in the subsequent tour of Gotham's back alleys, sewers and red light districts. Though she had to admit, the red light district HAD been a bit eye opening as well. Wow. Middleton had NOTHING like that! The night could have been quite… well, _informative_ was probably the right word… had Nightwing not scooted her right past, though his professed show about 'never going there' was an obvious sham.

She'd have to ask Robin if he knew what Nightwing was hiding. Although he was years behind his teammates in terms of fighting and technical skills, Kim had quickly learned that the young man in the green pants and yellow cape was the person to go to when she needed information that made sense of the bizarre string of relationships that theoretically held the Bat Clan together. That was something that she was increasingly grateful for given how the others all seemed to want to dance around each new bit of scuttlebutt she encountered… it was uncomfortably like that one Stoppable family reunion that Ron had talked her into attending during the period where they were still an item. Though if the Stoppables had a lot of unspoken secrets and skeletons in their closets, the Bats had libraries and mausoleums. Probably where the inspiration for the bat motif had come from in the first place.

"Are you sure you don't take some kind of performance enhancing drugs?" The tall, angular young man scowled as he walked up beside her, still catching his breath. "Or have Amazonian DNA?"

"Just clean living and the power of positive thinking," Kim returned, never interrupting her workout. "And maybe a little help from Wade's 'toys.'"

"Yeah, you've sold ME," Nightwing's face looked like he was trying to hold back a grin, as the 'grimace' he was trying to keep on his face kept trying to twitch upwards on both ends. "But if you want to do yourself a favor, try not to gloat on that too much in the old man's presence."

Kim ignored him, allowing a very smug smile to stretch from ear to ear. It had quickly become obvious to her that her own equipment… hastily remodeled in full Bat-mode by a hero worshiping Wade… was, in general, noticeably superior to most of the current Bat-arsenal. Her grapplegun, now in a much slimmer black housing with a Bat-emblem on the side, was capable of a greater distance and had a faster rewind than the official Bat-Grapples, and the Bat-Team didn't have anything to compare with her lipstick laser or the newly renamed 'Batmunicator.' However, when she'd passed on Wade's offer to produce similar gear for the rest of the team, Batman's reaction had been… well, it had been odd. You'd have thought he manufactured his bat-gear himself, rather than farming it out to a division of Wayne Industries, and was embarrassed at being offered a better product by a kid who was just entering his teens and built everything in his bedroom.

"_Which just goes to prove, Wade" _She thought as she finished her exercises and stood to face Nightwing._ "You STILL rock!"_

"So, in your expert opinion," She asked slyly. "Am I ready?"

"Skills-wise?" Nightwing gave the impression of lilting one eyebrow behind his mask. "To be honest, you could probably kick my ass. But characterization wise, you still need to watch yours."

"Ah, yes, that…" Kim sighed. That had ended up being the most difficult part of her "training.' She had to be able to pass for Batgirl even around those who knew the crimefighter, so they'd fit her with fake boobs, elevator heels that subtly added an extra inch to her height and a vocoder patch on her throat to drop the register of her own voice to closely match Batgirl's normal tones… but even with all that, it was apparently obvious to the others that _something_ was missing, and it had been Nightwing who had put his finger on it.

"It's your, um, rear-end," he'd uncharacteristically blushed. "Batgirl sways when she walks and you just…"

"I just what?" Kim had asked in a deceptively soft tone that Ron Stoppable would have recognized as a cue to start running.

"Well, you kinda walk like…," Nightwing flushed, then started over. "Bar… Batgirl slinks and sways, where you… I mean… Oh hell, let's look at some tapes."

Embarassingly enough, he'd been dead on in his assessment. She'd initially thought he was just abnormally focused on her ass, but when they'd gone back and looked at video of the real Batgirl, she DID have an exaggerated sway to her hips. On the other hand, Kim had never realized that she, herself, had a very determined, forceful forward walk and barely moved her hips at all.

In other words, Kim Possible walked like a tomboy, Batgirl walked like a sex goddess.

As a result, she'd ended up spending quite a bit of time watching tapes of Batgirl… both in action and simply walking around… all the while attempting to emulate the same physicality of her Gotham counterpart. It had been a lot harder than she'd expected it to be… trying to keep the motion from the tape in mind at all times… but then she'd made her big breakthrough when, ironically, she'd finally realized the similarity of Batgirl's swaying hip motion to that of her own former foe, Shego. Keeping how Shego moved in mind was a lot easier, and while Nightwing was still rather particular about it, neither Robin or The Bat… as Robin and Batgirl apparently referred to their elder partner when he wasn't within earshot… could tell the difference.

"I'll keep working on it," Kim promised with a smirk, turning and walking away with an exaggerated hip thrust.

"Better?" She tossed back over her shoulder.

"Uh… yeah," Nightwing gurgled, the giant red letters reading GULP across the top of the roof behind him effectively summing up his reaction. "I uh… I've got someplace I need to be. So… um… you know how to get home, right?"

"My hotel's right over there," Kim pouted, motioning northwards to the Wayne Residential Suites they'd put her up in. "But I need to get switched over to staying up all night, so it's kinda early to be going back to that cold little bed. Couldn't we…?"

"No," Nightwing's head bobbed. "I really have to be someplace. So uh…" It was as if a switch was suddenly pulled inside him as he made an abrupt decision. "You know what? You're good."

Kim made the little hand on cocked hip gesture that took the place of an eyebrow raise while in bat-costume.

"I mean, as in there's nothing else I can show you," Nightwing continued rapidly. "I'll tell Br…Batman in the morning, but if you want to go on solo and work off some of that tension, it'll be fine."

"Well… if you're sure…" Kim slowly turned the pout up another twenty degrees… not the old school puppy dog pout, but a new variant she'd been developing while dating Ron, followed by a deep sad sigh. "I suppose I can find something to do." A VERY deep, sad, breathy and lonely sigh. "I CAN do anything, you know."

"Gotta Go!" Nightwing blurted. "If you need anything, call Batman, he's got the late, late shift!"

Kim held back the giggles in as Nightwing somehow managed to keep from killing himself as he flung his bat-rope off into the night. She knew she was being horrifically wicked, but she had a feeling that finding ways to phase the supposedly unflappable Nightwing could become her new hobby. Of course, HE didn't know that SHE knew exactly where he was going.

Though all involved had initially denied that there was anything going on now, at one point, Batgirl had confided that she and Nightwing's "real" identities had dated, but that it had fallen apart once they discovered who each other's secret crime fighting identity was… a concept that just hurt Kim's head to think about but that was apparently not unheard of in the big G. Of course, knowing that HAD explained why they had put Nightwing in charge of coaching her to move like Batgirl, but the level of… knowledge… Nightwing had about the real dynamic damsel betrayed that he was still a man deeply besotted; and it hadn't taken Kim long to figure out that Batgirl felt the same way BUT there were issues with Batman, who had apparently also been... well… it was all really quite a soap opera.

The end result, though, was that while Kim WOULD be going back to a 'cold little bed,' Nightwing was on his way back to as much action as was possible while one of the parties involved had her leg in a cast. What made everything just a little wrongsick was that he also clearly had some hang-ups involving the batsuits themselves; as in when Nightwing was watching Kim, she got the impression that he was sometimes slipping into thinking about the real article and trying desperately not to get the two confused. That opened up a whole series of possibilities that, in retrospect, made Kim REALLY hope that the suit that she had inherited had never been used before. Because, like… ew!

Then again, she thought as she caught her reflection in a sheet of mirrored plate glass. Maybe it WASN'T just the suit that was messing with Nightwing's mind. While there were obvious downsides to this gig, there were definitely some perks as well, and right at the top of the list were some of the reevaluations it had forced Kim to make about herself. After years of thinking of herself 'just an average girl,' it had come as a bit of a shock for Kim to make the sudden discovery that when poured into the iconic Bat-Costume, she was anything but average. She was, in fact, what could only be described as totally smokingly hot.

"_Not bad, Possible,"_ she thought with a wolfish grin, admiring the way the skin-tight black outfit hugged curves that the young hero hadn't been aware she had just a few days ago. _"Not bad at all."_

Oh, granted, the realistically jiggly silicone inserts that took her breasts from a modest B to a full C weren't hers, but it wasn't something that an uber-bra couldn't give her the appearance of, and she had plans to buy more than a few of those when she went back to being plain old Kim. And, on the flip side, the fact that her single greatest natural asset, her flaming red hair, was dulled down under a temporary die that better matched the real Batgirl's hair tone certainly should be allowed to balance some of that out. In fact, suddenly having to deal with the 'extra breadth' upstairs was doing a lot to minimize her long fixation on larger breasts… she'd been surprised to find out how inconvenient they were turning out to be… the first time she'd gotten a lift in the Batmobile, she though Robin was going to have a… something… watching her attempt to find a comfortable way to wear the seatbelts.

(Yes, the Batmobile had seat belts, which wasn't quite as bizarre as discovering that Batman was a compulsive "Is everyone buckled up?"-er.)

In any case, NOT focusing on her personal lack of boobage had finally drawn Kim's attentions to the rest of her body, and the completely revealing nature of her BatTights had finally made her notice that the genes she'd her inherited from her mom combined with years of exercise had combined to create what she was willing to admit was one of the finest asses she had ever seen. Showcased in the skin-tight BatSuit, it was such a stunning change that she found it hard to swing past a reflective surface without giving herself an approving look.

"_Yep, the tights definitely show off my better assets,"_ Kim thought. _"I'd definitely do me in a second."_

She stopped, suddenly, realizing what she'd just thought. That was a MOST un-Kim-Posssible-like thought. And if she was going to be honest with herself, she'd been having a LOT of un-Kim moments over the last few days, all of which led her to wonder whether, in the process of burying her "Kimness" inside the alternate identity that she'd chosen to think of as Bat-Kim, she'd subconsciously re-opened bridges to aspects of her own personality that had previously been buried. In a way, that thought was kind of disturbing… and yet, at the same time, just a little bit exciting.

Okay, it was a LOT exciting. This dual identity stuff was like going to a shrink without the guidance/advice part, and if being Batgirl didn't get her enough excitement at night, maybe there was yet another aspect of 'Kim' who could find something interesting to do here in Gotham…

She was just wondering why so many superheroes went the "dark, angsty, introspective" route when the first explosion lit up the sky…

_To Be Continued… _

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_**Holy Bat-Legal stuff:**__ Kim Possible, Shego, Dr. Betty Director, Jack Hench, Wade Load, Ron Stoppable and all other characters from the wonderful KP Universe are the creations of Mark McCorkle and Bob Schooley, and those names are all trademarks of the Disney media organizations. Batman, Batgirl, Nightwing, Robin, the Joker, the Penguiin, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, The Riddler and Two-Face are all property of DC Comics and Time Warner Communications. Dr. Doom was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and is the property of Marvel Comics. Oh, and those other villains? I'd be curious to see who actually recognized them (and their source series) before I post it. If you have a guess or just magically KNOW the answer,'cause you're like all psychic and stuff, pop it in a review, okay? All use should be considered fair under current parody law, and is not for profit in any case. Finally, this story takes place at a time at which all characters shown should be considered to be over the legal age of 18._


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